The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group works to help people whose rights have been violated and investigates cases involving such abuse, as well as assessing the overall human rights situation in Ukraine. The Group also seeks to develop awareness of human rights issues through public events and its various publications

Around 300 young Russians recently took part in a camp training fighters in the Moscow region, with their instructors including two prominent neo-Nazis who until this summer were fighting on the side of the Kremlin-backed militants in Donbas. Alexei Milchakov is a St Petersburg neo-Nazi who moved from decapitating puppies and calling on fellow Neo-Nazis to kill down-and-outs back in Russia to torturing Ukrainian soldiers in Donbas as part of a formation called ‘Rusich’. The latter services appear to have made the Russian authorities waive criminal charges supposedly facing Milchakov in his native St. Petersburg. In March 2015 he and fellow neo-Nazi militant Jan Petrovsky (Veliki Slavian) were part of a militant ‘delegation’ to a forum in St. Petersburg of members of mainly European and Russian far-right and neo-Nazi parties. Now the two men are valued ‘instructors’ at a camp under the patronage of former ‘prime minister of the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’, Alexander Borodai.

The last training camp for fighters from ‘Rusich’ and an organization called the E.N.O.T Corporation were on Sept 26-27 on territory adjoining a monastery in the Moscow region village of Avdotino. The head of the monastery is probably the priest in the video here who comes and blesses all 300 participants in the camp on learning how to kill, escape, etc. A new invitation has just appeared on the ENOT site for those wishing to take part, totally free of charge, on Nov 21-22.

ENOT claims to be a volunteer outfit, but it clearly enjoys generous funding and its mercenaries regularly take part in ‘business trips’ otherwise known as fighting against the Ukrainian military in Donbas. Denis Kazansky, a prominent Donetsk journalist now in exile, reports that ENOT fighters carried out a purge in Spring this year of a Cossack formation which was competing for power with the current leader of the so-called ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [LNR’]. The organization’s address is in the very centre of Moscow, and its website openly displays its training sessions in Russia. It is unclear, Kazansky writes, how any of this complies with Russian legislation. Unfortunately, however, nobody seems to be asking that question.

The training course involved seminars and practice in sniper fire; using a pistol or machine gun; martial arts; field medicine, etc. Kids who look 13 or 14 at most are taught to shoot, move and take aim without being observed, to move injured comrades, etc. with their trainers men from ‘Rusich’ who “fought successfully in Donbas”.

Borodai is in the centre in blue, Milchakov second on his left

Serious questions arise regarding such training courses for fighters, including who is providing the funding both for the courses and for the so-called ‘business trips’. In a skype interview, Milchakov made it quite clear that he, Petrovsky and their fighters all received money for his bloody services.

Even if one assumes that the young kids are simply enjoying an action-packed break, the choice of instructors is chilling.

Milchakov had already earned notoriety, as well as the threat of criminal charges in his native St Petersburg when he began fighting in Donbas in June 2014. Moskovsky Komsomolets called him a “well-known Russian maniac” who as a 20-year-old in 2012 had posted images of himself with a puppy whose head he cut off and ate. “After that Milchakov constantly posed with Nazi banners and called on people to kill down-and-outs and dogs”*.

Within months he had demonstrated the same propensities in Donbas, with Ukrainian soldiers his victims.

On Sept 5, the same day that the first Minsk Accord was signed, 2 groups from the Aidan volunteer battalion and other Ukrainian soldiers came under siege from the Rusich unit. Milchakov was among the militants who posted videos of themselves, for example, cutting off the ear of one of their victims. The videos have all been removed from YouTube due to their monstrous content, however copies will certainly have been retained and, like the photos here, will hopefully receive appropriate assessment from the International Criminal Court.

Russian pro-Kremlin media have been happy to interview both Milchakov and Petrovsky, though avoiding indiscreet questions about their neo-Nazi views, none of which the men see any need to conceal. In April both men gave a skype interview in which Milchakov shared his opinion that the “mightiest potential lies in Russians” and that Ukrainians’ fight for freedom runs counter to the interests of his people. Petrovsky, in turn, announced that they are “building a Russian national ‘Chechnya’ where everything will be only for the Russian people”.

And not without their highly specific ideology – the one that the Kremlin has tried to claim is espoused by the government in Kyiv. Milchakov explained that they both carry out “educational work” regarding their neo-Nazi views among the militants. If they don’t, nobody will, he says. As well as fighting, he added.

The same activities are probably included in their work as ‘instructors’ in the Moscow region.

The only question mark is perhaps over where the trained fighters are to spread the word. A brief report on the ENOT site, for example, makes it clear that Russian action in Syria should also be viewed as a “sacred war”.

That, however, is not a decision for neo-Nazi sadists who go where those with the money send them to kill and torture.